


gemini

by orphan_account



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale's Seemingly Stoic Ways, Conversations, Crowley's Moral Dilemmas, Dreams, Dreams vs. Reality, Idiots in Love, M/M, Meddling, Prophetic Dreams, and
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2018-12-31 15:52:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12135840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: ‘Aziraphale,’ Crowley whispered, wide-eyed and trembling, and catching the remains of this unworldly world before it died, ‘none of this is real.’There are multiple ways in which certain events may unfold, and sometimes the Universe might give you a hint.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My second Good Omens story! This is rare. I've been almost exclusively Doctor Who thus far.  
> I was listening to the song from which I borrowed the title and lyrics and this potential scenario developed.

_(on a planet not so far away  
we were born together)_

 

He woke up soaked in unfamiliar warmth. It was physical, physical and _solid_ , a nose nuzzled into skin, a palpable murmur of a pulse. Mussed feathers and a blanket, and rhythmical, measured heartbeats. Breathing.

And then there was a slither of cold. Faint, clever, burning past the skin like a trickle of water or a whiplash, helping distinguish the warmth from his memory senses: _this_ was more familiar, but still not quite, because the warmth persisted.

He opened his eyes: an open window, wind billowing in in a puffed-out sail of a white lace curtain, light too bright not to feel dizzy. The cold had come with the wind, and the awakening had come with a rattle of the window frame; it had clicked open to let in the pushing gust of slithery air. The room was flooded with it—and particles of dust cluttering the space, lit up and swarming. A wooden floor. A bed. 

A _company_. 

Crowley felt Aziraphale inhale and stir, turning away from him with a snuffle—it invited yet more cold, and it left him tingling, this awareness of almost inebriating spatial proximity. He half-wanted to lean forward and draw back, nearer to the cotton T-shirt and sleep-heated skin, but he couldn’t. He _couldn’t_.

Aziraphale was asleep, and that _in itself was a paradox_ , because he didn’t tend to be. But there was more to it, much more: because it was not a window that Crowley recognised, and not a bed, and not a floor, and he didn’t know the tickle of the angel’s ruffled feathers on his forearm either, not at all. Because did not _happen_ , not that way. Never. There was no such warmth, no such light, there was only a continuous state of being cold, so different from this dizzying wind.

Crowley inhaled sharply, trying to withdraw and feel his way out of the tangle of sheets and soft fabric that didn’t feel like a suit draped over his chest and hips: cottony, homelike. He fumbled and hissed involuntarily, panic rising within him in a cacophony, because Aziraphale’s eyes fluttered open in reaction to the stirring and they were—they were—

 _Blue_. They should be blue but they shouldn’t be looking like that. Like he—

‘Crowley. S’early. S’not like you,’ Aziraphale muttered, voice muffled and drowsy and warm. ‘S’the matter, dear?’

Then he did the unthinkable—and he reached over, a sleepy, looping motion: warm fingers stroking past Crowley’s increasingly cold ones, settling splayed on the wrist. Crowley’s heart was beating so fast it was almost painful, and every cell of his mind was screaming, screaming to _stop, please stop, please—_

But his body betrayed him: leaning blasphemously forward and into the touch, and Crowley lay jittering like a startled bird. Aziraphale’s brows knitted together, a shadow crossing his face. The curtain flapped in the air, which was becoming greyer and denser with each moment, dripping the soft sunlight like flakes of old paint. Becoming known.

‘You never wake this early,’ Aziraphale then said, sounding sickeningly, _impossibly_ concerned.

‘ _Aziraphale_ ,’ Crowley whispered, wide-eyed and trembling, and catching the remains of this unworldly world before it died, ‘none of this is real.’

****

_(in the beginning there was just you and me)_

 

It was a brief sensation: like something in the world around him stuttered to a lapse in functioning so brief it was nearly unperceivable: a wrong intake of breath, a dawdling still of a film, crack of badly-suited light. Crowley almost blinked.

_Bloody hell, I’m getting old._

Instead he lowered the cup meticulously onto the greyish, tattered wood.

It all looked unpleasantly ridiculous, he thought grimly: two austere chairs strewn across a tiny table, with a clashingly colourful teapot perched at the centre. And all around, _nothing_ : a void of something sluggishly ceasing to exist. White cloth flung over the furniture, dreary light from a dirtied window pane and gathering dust. Thick and cold dust, for a change, instead of welcomingly messy. 

Crowley cleared his throat, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. ‘Well, in any case, I’m glad that, er … you and … sorry, what was his name, again? That you got it right together. I mean, I’m not really supposed to say that, but—oh, blast it, who _cares_? I’m glad you sorted it out, period.’

Who was there to judge how much he strayed from his designated destination, anyway? Hell didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass anymore, and if Crowley was being honest with himself, maintaining the effort of appearing to be malignant before a non-existent judge was a little beyond his current willpower. Or current _anything_.

Anathema looked up from the floor with the vaguely apologetic expression of someone who hadn’t heard a single word uttered their way. She had a glazed over look to her eyes, and one of her hands was clutched tightly around the wrist of the other. Some sign of tension, surely. Crowley could spot those from a mile’s distance.

He waited patiently until she cottoned on, tapping a finger lightly on the porcelain. ‘Oh, Newt,’ she said at length, and rather uncertainly at that. ‘You mean Newt, right?’

‘Is there anybody else?’ Crowley said, wondering mildly whether he really had descended so low as to pretend he cared for the answer. The answer, obviously, was _yes_ : and he could hardly pretend this pathetic craving for conversation, no matter the identity of the other participant, was a new trait. That was how it all had bloody started, in a way. Wasn’t it?

Anathema shrugged one shoulder, eyes wandering away. ‘Not really,’ she muttered. ‘No one else. But, er—there’s no Newt, either, to be honest. We sort of … drifted apart. Such things happen.’

Crowley winced—he found the idea unreasonably appalling. _Drifted apart_ , like two randomly coinciding twigs carried by an overeager river, which had bumped into each other while trying to prevent a flood. And then slunk on, unbothered, devoid of will to argue. Something heavy settled in his stomach.

Anathema noticed his expression, and misinterpreted it. Her eyes hardened. ‘This place, it hasn’t always been your weird … storage room for having tea, has it?’ she asked, bluntly. ‘There was something else here. Something different. I can _feel_ it.’

Crowley didn’t respond. He studied the teacup for a moment: there was a tiny crack at the edge, a faint line of something that might possibly evolve into a shattered teacup with time. But who would think to try and prevent it? People generally tend to merrily overlook little signs of pending doom. And Crowley apparently tended to generally behave like people.

He became acutely aware of Anathema’s eyes boring into him rather shrewdly, but pointedly didn’t look up. 

He also quietly hoped she would see through all this, somehow. All this, this extravagant _façade_ of impeccable nonchalance. After all these years, he thought it rather miserably obvious: there was always something raw and lonely underneath, hidden in plain sight. And Crowley didn’t much like the idea of it staying hidden.

_Surely that’s not so hard to guess?_

‘How’s your angel friend doing, then?’ Anathema said, voice listless.

A sharp strike of stifling cold shot through Crowley’s abdomen and travelled up to the lungs, coiling there into a tight knot. In a split of second, he decided that to hope for transparency was foolish, inconceivable even: he didn’t want that. He didn’t want _anything_ , and he didn’t want her here, especially, not in this last dying shred of the past. All of the sudden, it felt blasphemous.

And Crowley had a pretty decent idea about what proper blasphemy should look like.

‘I don’t really know,’ he said after a while, trying to collect himself enough for his voice not to snap or waver. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve heard from him, actually.’

( _One-way ticket to hell, maybe, but isn’t there a plenitude of ever-ajar doors within Heaven? So easy to slink back into the bliss given the chance. So only natural._ )

She didn’t lower her eyes. ‘Right,’ she said, tonelessly.

Crowley stared at the table once again: this wretched half-empty cup of tea and his own hand outstretched on the tattered wood: thin long fingers tracing the edge of porcelain, and a stiff-ironed cuff. And when he tried to speak once more, his throat was dry and burning, like he’d overdosed on red wine—which he hadn’t, not recently, not for in a long time. His voice came out hoarse, a little strained, ‘Such things … _happen_.’

And somewhere deep in the naïve subconscious, he _still_ waited for the ring of a bell in the door which would spare him the awkwardness of raising his eyes to see pity; and which didn’t come. There was no longer a bell. What remained was mould in the corners, a frayed wallpaper, and a lingering scent of books and cocoa so faint he wasn’t sure if he wasn’t simply wishing it into existence through the use of his stubbornly accurate memory. 

‘Yes,’ Anathema murmured, and her voice sounded different, somehow. Crowley looked up and gave a start: her eyes were unnaturally bright, as though lit up from behind by some internal flashlight. Like she wasn’t really alive, only brought to serve as a prop in a theatre play, a clever substitute for a human. ‘They do. _But this one hasn’t yet_.’

He froze.

With a tremor, the world cracked with the porcelain and erupted into dry splinters around them.

And Crowley was tugged forward, upwards, into a new awareness. The dream died beneath him, muddled and twitching, and he complied.

 

_(never lived forever, there was no such thing)_

 

When he opened his eyes, the bedroom ceiling above him was blurrily white, the light poking in through the blinds thick and grey, and a stuffy scent of a rarely ventilated space hanging in the air. Something _else_ hung in the air, too: a very flimsy memory fruitlessly trying to fight its way out of the deepest depths of short-span attention.

But when Crowley stretched his sleep-stiffened limbs with a grunt, he didn’t remember.

He sat up, doing something impossibly stretchy with the bones of his spine and neck; something that would probably give a yoga trainer anxiety. He’d always liked his bed: he liked that it was big and exclusive and had that vibe going on, of something you could slither into, sink into and never ascend. Or a pretence of it, at least. His untouchable space.

He crept out of the sheets, sneaked into a bathrobe and padded towards the kitchen.

He had a dream, though, didn’t he? An odd one, the intrusive sort. It was good, and then it wasn’t. Funny. There was something … _something_. Ha. Crowley couldn’t recall.

But there was something about Aziraphale in it.

He often dreamed of Aziraphale. Inevitable, really: they’d spent so much time in each other’s immediate vicinity, six millennia, no less. And the Armageddon business hardly served as a reason to minimise this recurring reaction, either. So it was only natural that Aziraphale was a nearly constant motif of Crowley’s wandering subconscious, wasn’t it?

But there was something _odd_ about it, something that, though unshaped and unremembered, sent a fleeting touch of cold up Crowley’s neck.

Yes, Aziraphale had featured in Crowley’s dream. And then … and then he didn’t. Then he wasn’t there at all.

Crowley stopped dead in his tracks, frowning mildly. The kettle boiled water with a shrill whistle, a puff steam coiling over the spotless white counter. Now, that was a chilling thought: _no Aziraphale_.

Crowley was comfortably fond of it—this impossible entity of mismatched and often supremely annoying features that composed an Aziraphale: bright wings, brighter eyes, a holy radiance that liked cocoa, tartan and fifteenth century satire a little bit too well—so much that he took it nearly for granted: the world devoid of him seemed a ridiculous concept. Nightmarish, even.

He quickly bashed the last sentiment, growing flustered. Nah. No. Not _nightmarish_.

He didn’t like this kind of easy thoughts. They were sneaky and conniving, sure, only he wasn’t supposed to subject _himself_ to either of those demonic virtues. Especially that the deviousness lay in the very fact that these were not _demonic_ thoughts at all.

Crowley had to admit; he could never love in an all-encompassing way, so that at least tipped the scales in his ungodly favour. If he loved the Earth, it was because of it being and only, a unique universal error, and quite personally relatable at that. If he loved _humans_ , then it was for the rare ripples of individual—and so often horrific—ingenuity hidden between the terrifying mass. 

And if that was a capacity for love, _some_ love, twisted and indirect as it was—then could it really be held against him?

Because if he _loved_ Aziraphale, then it was still for all the wrong in the right.

He curled his fingers into a tight ball, staring unseeingly at the kitchen counter. Immediately, as always, there was the doubt: and what if he was wrong, if that _was_ the threshold? Did a capacity _in any capacity_ make him the Other?

Because it still felt the wrong kind of devious: perhaps the broader spectre was nobler, but Crowley couldn’t help another guilty thought his unspoken and stifled affection was somehow more honest. 

He was broken out of his grim reverie by two simultaneous occurrences: the kettle went off with a crack, and the doorbell rang shrilly.

 

_(on this planet not so far away)_

 

‘Something’s wrong,’ she said, a little breathlessly, standing on the porch of Crowley’s flat, as though there existed a _way_ for her to stand there, a way for her to find this flat at all. He was so taken aback that he forgot to consider the fact that he was clad in a fluffy white bathrobe, shades discarded somewhere-unspecified and yellow eyes vulnerably showing.

‘What the hell do you think you’re—’ Crowley began, but Anathema cut him off. Her cheeks were tinted red, eyes gleaming with some manic sort of urgency. 

‘No, listen, I don’t care,’ she said, words hasty and jumbled. ‘Something’s not right. Something’s—we’re at the _brink_ of something. About to tip and fall into one of those … versions, not even realising. There’s two realities, and it hasn’t been decided yet which one happens and which one ... but it’s so weird, because we’re not supposed to know about it, are we? But I do, and you do, and …’ she broke off with a sharp, nervous breath. ‘I mean, you can feel that too, right? You can … you were _there_.’

He was about to ask an impatient and coldly curt _where?_ and shut the door in her face as soon as she wouldn’t be able to accurately reply. He half-wanted to say, _I don’t know what you’re talking about._

Instead he held his breath and fixated on a little detail: one of her hands, clutched around the wrist of the other. And then another: knitted eyebrows over very alert eyes. A little twitch of an eyelid. But he shouldn’t recognise those, he’s never stared her in the face before—

The world came to a halt.

 _(‘Such things … happen.’_ )

Very slowly, and very self-consciously, Crowley blinked.

‘Well?’ Anathema prompted, looking rather desperate. ‘D’you know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ said Crowley, trying to overcome the feeling of the Earth eluding existence under his feet; the creeping doubt in the solidity of his present reality. ‘I know. But I don’t know what …’

He trailed off. The newly recovered dream rippled and pulsed inside his head, warped and two-faced like a double sided mirror. He inhaled with a hiss.

‘I don’t know,’ he repeated slowly, staring down at the floor as though to persuade its existence to continue, ‘what determines the outcome. Of the … of the tipping and falling part, I mean.’

‘I think I might have an idea,’ Anathema said, in a small voice.

****

_(we wouldn’t stay together)_

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to split this story in two, because something wasn't working. I hope it reads well now. And thank you for the lovely comments, they really mean the world <3

_(go roll over in a dream)_

****

‘So you think it’s …’

‘The boy,’ Crowley said quickly, gesticulating wildly in the air. ‘Adam. The Antichrist. Of bloody course it would be him, I mean who else would do such a pointless thing as—’

‘We don’t _know_ if it’s pointless,’ Aziraphale observed gently. Crowley blessed.

‘Alright, then, not pointless in the _pointless pointless_ sense, but pointless in the … I mean, it wasn’t like a bloody vision of the grand scheme of the Universe’s possible downfall, for Go—for He—for _Earth’s sake_. It was just like some … some indulgent idle epilogue versus a … a scientific prediction. Of … of one little test tube in an aquarium. Like, only one factor altered, the rest staying in place like a controlled measure. Y’know?’

‘No,’ Aziraphale said with a sigh, ‘I don’t. Crowley, what on earth are you trying to say?’

‘I’m saying,’ Crowley proclaimed, rather helplessly, ‘that it all seems a fat lot of effort for something so inconsequential.’

‘But you don’t _know_ if it was inconsequential, dear boy,’ Aziraphale said again, patiently. Then he noted Crowley’s deeply uncertain expression and frowned. ‘Or do you?’ 

‘ _No_ ,’ Crowley said, settling upon a wish that Aziraphale’s heavenly goodwill will prevent him from seeing through the obvious inaccuracy of the statement. ‘But I’m telling you, it wasn’t … it wasn’t anything _grand_.’

Aziraphale shook his head gently, as though to radiate the word _ineffable_ from every, tiniest even move of his physical existence.  ‘But how do you _know_ that, my dear?’

‘I just _know_ ,’ Crowley insisted. ‘It just had this …’ he hesitated. Somewhere below, a duck quacked rather mockingly, ‘… this un-grand vibe to it,’ he finished lamely.

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, it certainly was grand enough to send you spiralling to such extent,’ he noted with concern.

‘M’not spiralling,’ Crowley automatically denied, staring at the frenzied ducks fighting for bread down in the pond.

‘Yes, you are,’ Aziraphale said dismissively, flicking a crumb into the water. ‘Honestly, though, why are you so dead-set on the idea that it means anything at all, then? If you say it wasn’t important, then … perhaps it was just that? A really peculiar dream?’

‘Yes, and I just happened to share it with Anathema-Bloody-Device,’ Crowley said caustically, glowering—the event of which went sadly unnoticed due to his glasses—and throwing an angry half-scone at a duck. ‘Because that’s just a thing that happens.’

Aziraphale contemplated it. ‘Well, it does seem a little odd,’ he allowed. Then, as an afterthought, ‘Does she have any thoughts on it?’

‘On what?’ Crowley muttered, yanking a bit of crust away from the already mutilated scone. 

‘On the— _please_ don’t throw them so hard, my dear, you’ll give one of the poor things a concussion—on the possible meaning of this … this vision that you shared?’

‘Well,’ Crowley admitted, reluctantly, ‘she said maybe it was because she’d burnt up the book. That book of Agnes whatshername, with prophecies. That it … how’d she put it? That it _altered the natural progression of linear events_.’

Aziraphale nodded, like hearing such sentiments was an everyday matter to him. 

‘But I thought the book didn’t go forth beyond the day of the Armageddon,’ he observed casually, as though he wasn’t in fact pointing out that he, Aziraphale, was perfectly sure that was indeed the correct fact, because he, Aziraphale, had read the book in question. Most carefully. Crowley would have teased, was he not so thoroughly crushed with existence at the present moment.

‘Yeah, no, I meant the other book,’ he said distractedly, wincing, ‘the follow-up, so to say. She said she’d had it mailed to her, or something. I mean, think about the premeditation on this. _Christ_.’ 

He realised he’d made a mistake as soon as the words left his unfortunate mouth and Aziraphale went rigid. Crowley chanced a glance at him and blessed inwardly at the look of sheer wonder on the angel’s face.

‘A … nother book?’ he whispered, reverently. ‘There was another book? _And you didn’t tell me?_ ’

There was a brief, and mildly accusatory, pause.

‘I didn’t know,’ Crowley muttered. Then he winced again. ‘But you, _um_ , you heard what I said, right? She’d burnt it up. With that Newt character. To avoid being descendants, I believe she’d said. A blasted odd thing to say, real—’

‘Oh, no, _silly_ , of course she didn’t,’ Aziraphale cut him off, confidently, preening like a peacock. ‘She wouldn’t.’

Crowley sighed. ‘Aziraphale …’

‘Crowley,’ the angel tsked fretfully. ‘ _Dear_. I know a dedicated reader when I see one. That girl would not burn up that book. She might have done something to it, but she wouldn’t give up on the … content, so to say. No, no, the book is still … preserved. In some way.’

Crowley watched him gloomily from behind his shades, leaning heavily on the railing. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘sso? What the hell does it change?’

‘So?’ Aziraphale repeated, incredulously. ‘My dear, this changes everything. This—this splitting of two possibilities, it could have been recorded! A correct path to follow could have been set out. I do believe you wanted a solution to the riddle, didn’t you?’

Something cold and furious welled up inside Crowley, only to be forcefully stifled by his own panicked mind, right before he did something thoroughly irreversible. He inhaled sharply, trying to cool off and assess his own capabilities of stoicism.  Which, at best, were rather poor.

And he couldn’t quite stop himself anyway—not entirely.

‘ _Reall_ y?’ he said, and it came out in a genuine hiss, piercing and almost seething. ‘That’s what you think? Funny, because I don’t understand that sort of thinking at all. You … you reject something, you don’t do something because of some goddamned reason, which has been valid at some point and has no job in becoming any less so, and you’re willing to discard that because someone tells you that you can? Because it’s _written down_? Does that make it allowable? Not because you’d do that, but because someone _told_ you that you might? You know what—this is _bullshit_ , Aziraphale. That’s not _honest_. That’s just—that’s just trying to find a justification, that’s what it is. I …’

And suddenly he broke off, breath catching, the awareness of what he’d meant to say hitting him with full force. Something irreversible. Something _unforgivable_.

There was a muffling silence about them, dulling the entire word and making way for Crowley’s distraught realisation of his own helplessness. He shut his eyes, gritted his teeth. Swallowed.

And then Aziraphale’s hand was resting on his arm: warm and solid, and Crowley desperately wanted to _wake up_ just then; discard this reality and open his eyes to a new one, an easier one, where that gesture wouldn’t leave him burning and ashamed at what he allowed or didn’t allow himself to feel.

‘Crowley,’ the angel said, very softly. ‘What on earth does this mean?’

‘Nothing. Don’t know,’ Crowley said, tersely. ‘Jussst—nothing.’ 

‘It didn’t sound like a nothing.’

‘It’s not—look, it is _nothing_ , really. I got carried away. This … this dream, or whatever the hell that was, it was bloody unsettling, alright? It’s just—why would he do that, Adam, or whomever the hell decided to play such a lovely practical joke on me, why would he choose something that made no sssense? That had a—that was just surreal. And juxtaposed it with something so sombre that it could’ve happened every other day. It _doesn’t make sense_.’

Aziraphale hesitated. His hand didn’t leave Crowley’s shoulder, terrifying in the way it seemed to fit just there. ‘So what you’re saying is that in your dream, you saw something that you thought … too improbable to be a plausible version of, er, _reality unfolding?_ ’

Crowley swallowed, looking vacantly into space stretching in front of him. He was uncomfortably tense by now, under Aziraphale’s persisting touch, and he began squirming—inching almost imperceptibly away, jumping up on his heels.

He said, quietly, ‘Something like that, yeah.’

The angel’s hand fell away, leaving a startling vacancy in its wake. ‘What _sort_ of an improbable thing?’

For a moment, Crowley felt too tired and confused to answer. And then the words came out spilling, ‘It’s like, you have this set of constants that you sort of cling to, things that you can safely assume won’t change because … because _that’s how it is_. You might not like it, but it’s reassuring in a way, right? Helps keep certain thresholds and limits to what you do to yourself. And then, when you’re presented with such an obvious contradiction of one of those things, it’s just … it’s not _funny_ , it’s just frustrating. Because it’s an obvious mistake, an error in the Matrix, so to say. It’s unsettling exactly because it doesn’t seem to be able to be true, no matter if you’d like it to be.’

Aziraphale opened his mouth, but Crowley talked over him. ‘Take that conversation we had after the Almost-Armageddon. We never really finished it, have we? Almost like we chose to forget the topic, this nagging question of whether either of us can be fundamentally different from our respective … dunno. Roles. Good in evil, evil in good. Paradoxes within blasted paradoxes. You hated that, Aziraphale, didn’t you? That chance probability that your assembled vision of the universal order could be undermined. Even though we’ve been doing that for years, millennia, even if we keep doing it simply by talking now, there’s certain … limits. A demon would not go for a kip in a chapel if he fancies remaining a whole unit of flesh. And an angel would not …  would not dip into some indulgent seduction, for crying out loud. It just doesn’t work that way. You can push at the boundaries all you want, but there’s some stuff that just won’t do with changing. Or else it’s just asking for a catastrophe. Don’t you _think_?’

For a moment, there was an almost rapt silence, as Aziraphale seemed to ponder on his words, and Crowley stared into his empty spot of choice, feeling hollow and brittle.

But then, Aziraphale said, rather dubiously, ‘Don’t you think you’re … missing the point, just a little?’

Crowley gave him a wholly incredulous look, which was actually just a look of very black sunglasses. But Aziraphale wasn’t facing him at all, brow furrowed and an expression of thoughtfulness on his face. 

‘I mean, you’re virtually contradicting yourself,’ he said, quietly. ‘Funny you should mention that, the conversation we’ve had just here. Right after the whole affair with the world ending, too, and you said something … something like, that it wouldn’t _matter_ what we did because if it’s all written in, then no matter what we choose, it’s still the right choice.’ 

‘Well, now I’m saying—’

‘You’re saying that there are limits even to this free will, but I disagree,’ Aziraphale said, firmly. ‘I’ve given it much more thought that you’d suspect, dear boy, that conversation. And what you said then.’

‘Thanks,’ Crowley said, tersely. ‘But that’s not—’

‘And yes, it is _unsettling_ ,’ Aziraphale continued, voice growing slightly bolder. ‘But unsettling is just another word for being scared of something, Crowley. If a demon wanted to sleep in a church, I don’t see a force that would actually keep him away. And if an angel wanted to …’

There was a long, shrill screech of a rubber tire halting jauntily on a dusty pavement: a red haired girl pedalled past them. The wind picked up.

 **_  
_ ** _(we’d drift apart on down the stream)_

 

And Crowley said, ‘No. You just … don’t do that sort of thing. _Wouldn’t_ do. Angels don’t do that sort of thing, that’s the point. Just like I wouldn’t—’

Aziraphale’s ever-conscientious voice immediately countered, ‘—unless we _make an effort_ —’

‘—precisely,’ Crowley snapped. ‘And you wouldn’t. That’s the point. End of question. I, ah—I think we should drop the matter altogether.’

He thought, _what a ridiculous bloody picture we make._  Aziraphale, mild and bright, in his tartan scarf and a trench coat, and himself, feeling like the embodiment of a thundercloud. So pointedly contradictory in every, tiniest even aspect, that it was almost laughable.

‘I would, though, you know,’ Aziraphale then said, tentatively. 

And Crowley suddenly wished he could dematerialise on demand; evaporate. A click of fingers, and off you go. _Away_.

‘You’d what?’ he said vaguely, pushing himself off the railing. The problem was that it wasn’t a dark and stormy night, it wasn’t even a night. No, the light was mellow and warm, sinking everything in a soft afterglow and clashing with the slyly creeping wind—a perfect weather for being _still alive_ , with shimmering leaves and a crisp scent of Autumn.

He hated it. No, wrong: he hated how it all played out like a dream anyway, regardless of the fact it was solid this time. A false pretence of universal balance. 

‘Make an effort,’ Aziraphale said, voice growing a notch steadier. ‘I _would_.’

Crowley grew even more tense, and quite aware of his own process of breathing. He very pointedly didn’t respond, and very pointedly ignored the tingling feeling crawling up his spine. 

Aziraphale hesitated. ‘Under certain circumstances, that is.’

Crowley released a supremely distressed sort of a nervous chuckle.

‘Ha,’ he said caustically. ‘Here’s to wildly improbable and hypothetical scenarios! Bravo, Aziraphale, you’re reaching peaks of purposefully obtuse ingenuity here. Of course, bloody _ineffability_ , meaning there _might_ be a time where you’ll be ordered to descend and, erm, do the do with this or that Virgin Katie or Judith or whomthehellever for the sake of ethereal amity. _Eternal_ ethereal amity. Spiffing concept, that,’ he spluttered, voice growing worryingly high-pitched. He briefly pictured Aziraphale wooing an inexplicably blonde-haired and wispy version of Anathema and very nearly shuddered.

For a lingering moment, Aziraphale didn’t respond, instead studying Crowley with the sort of expressionless intensity which always made the demon squirm. Blasted holy sight. Or holy _whatever_.

But then the angel blinked—as though returning to earth after indulging in some sort of a deep theological reverie or perhaps swallowing down an entire book; Crowley knew this look of a reluctantly abandoned reality—inhaled audibly and closed his eyes.

A gust of wind pushed past them.

‘That’s not what I meant, you know.’

An entirely unwelcome shiver crept its way up Crowley’s spine.  Aziraphale sounded terrifyingly self-aware and earnest. ‘What’d you mean, then, a life-or-death kind of situation? You realise, don’t you, that it’s all _ridiculous_ —’ 

‘Crowley.’

He closed his eyes behind the glasses, feeling suddenly nauseous and brittle. ‘ _What,_ Aziraphale?’

 _Curt. Impatient. Vaguely annoyed._ Or at least he hoped so. He also hoped nothing in his voice conveyed the level to which his hands were trembling.

‘I didn’t mean any sort of … ridiculous circumstances, as you put it. Not _Armageddon_ circumstances. I meant _other_ circumstances, Crowley. Under which I would …’ Aziraphale coughed gently into his hand. ‘ _Make an effort.’_

Crowley felt a little bit as though he’d gulped down an entire bottle of sauvignon blanc in one take: electrically dizzy and rather ineffectually detached from his physical form. He chuckled again, painfully aware that it sounded more like a very strangled cough, and swayed on his heels. ‘Oh, really? Oh, well. Fancy that, Aziraphale! Psyche revived by Cupid’s kiss, no less, I presume—I mean, _really_ , how mushy can you—’

‘Crowley _, please_.’

This time, Crowley didn’t even try to answer, allowing his throat to constrict. How the devil was he still able to breathe? Oh, right. He _wasn’t_.

‘What exactly was in the vision?’ 

Full-blown and long-suppressed panic sizzled up inside Crowley like an uncorked bottle, swarming everything with utter dizziness. ‘Ah. Ah, vision. _The_ vision. Right, we’re back at the starting point. Now, Azirahpale, I’ve already told you about the vision, haven’t I? Causality bubbles. Versions. Things. The general scheme of … broad possibility, yeah. Sso. What’s the point of …?’ 

He trailed off. Oh, it was hopeless. ‘I mean, it _was_ ridiculous, you understand,’ he added, miserably.

Aziraphale remained woefully unperturbed by any of this fumbling. ‘The general scheme, you say,’ he muttered. ‘And what about the details?’

A mad spark of desperation flared inside Crowley. He shot Aziraphale an exquisitely annoying smirk. ‘Ah, _angel_. Devil’s in the details, don’t you know?’

There was a silence, during which Crowley closed his eyes again and briefly contemplated locking himself in a compression chamber of a spaceship and hurling himself into an adjacent galaxy, maybe.

Then Aziraphale said, ‘You really are something else, Crowley, you realise that?’

 _Calmly. With a notch of resignation_. _And maybe impatience._

Crowley swivelled to face the railing again, fishing for a cigarette inside his suit’s pocket. ‘No idea what you mean,’ he said grandly, regaining a hint of sense in his fingertips. A good sign, that. It was always rather worrying when he went so numb during these scuffles with Aziraphale.

‘Besides,’ he now said, merrily, feeling like a professional idiot, ‘I should think that goes without saying, angel. Evil forces and suchlike, if you will.’

He debated the odds of stealing a glance at Aziraphale: a flash of almost palpably hot epinephrine surged through his veins at the very thought.

Righty-roo, then, still not on that page. Which was fine. Fine, _really_.

And then it wasn’t _fine_ , because Aziraphale spoke out, ‘I just think, it really would be much easier if you sometimes … just _talked_ to me, my dear boy.’

Oh, crap. Crowley gently extricated the cigarette from his hand, reasonably concerned that he would not be able to hold it up with fingers devoid of nerve-endings. Which he now seemed to have acquired. Again.

Aziraphale sounded calm. Aziraphale always sounded bloody _calm_. He’d always been so much better at the maintaining of the stoic air on the outside. If there really was anything to conceal _inside_ that would contradict this sheen of calm radiance, that is.

Crowley suddenly regretted his choice of form severely. He was supposed to be big. Tall. And he was _tall_ , sort of, but he was also very pointy. Lanky. And there was something to say about a long and thin thing: that I could be snapped in two easily when adequate force was applied.

He did not like Aziraphale being this perceptive. Just like he had not liked the touch of his hand earlier. 

Was that not a captivating paradox? He liked physical contact and that was exactly what scared him away from _more physical contact_. Not that he was strictly afraid of enjoying himself, no: it was more that he was afraid of becoming even more _attached_ and the two seemed to inevitably interlink and tangle.

He’d earlier established that he liked Aziraphale quite too much. And right now, when the layers were flaking away one by one exposing this much of Crowley and still _none_ of Aziraphale _—_ well, the physical sensation made a solid enough border, he thought, to be scared of crossing.

‘I think I’m beginning to understand,’ Aziraphale murmured. ‘Quite what you had in mind this entire time.’

That Crowley forced a sound out of his throat was a miracle in itself. ‘I doubt that,’ he said hollowly.

Aziraphale smiled with one corner of his mouth, and a little caustically. ‘You underestimate me. I’m not only good for theorizing, you know.’

 _I don’t want to know_ , Crowley thought. _Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it._

 

_(I reached for you like a child that clings)_

 

‘We could—’

‘Stop it,’ Crowley said, harshly. Suddenly he felt so thoroughly disgusted at himself, at his own twisted and inescapable nature, mind and body and all. Corruptive, inherently so, and even despite his own will. ‘How can you even—stop it. How could you? I’d _never_ make you—I’d never ask you to—’

‘Crowley, will you _listen_ to me?’

Crowley exhaled abruptly, jaw tightening. There was an odd edge to Aziraphale’s voice, suddenly, something that wasn’t meant to be possible to hear, not in a context like that. He almost shuddered: _blue eyes and an open window of a cottage_ , just another impossible event.

‘I don’t _know_ ,’ Crowley whispered.

‘I … I would not just be humouring you, for God’s sake,’ Aziraphale snapped in response, and for some absolutely miraculous reason, there was not a trace of any calmness in his voice left as all. ‘Or doing anything out of … good will. Jesus, I … I don’t understand why you would even think that, that I’d consider … it should go the other way, don’t you think? I should wonder, if it ever came down to it, why would _you_ ever want to—’ 

‘ _Stop_ ,’ Crowley repeated, in a very small voice. Aziraphale quietened. The unfamiliar crease of agitation on his forehead melted away, stifled almost forcibly along with a heated glint of usually cold blue eyes. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, quite unbearably stiffly. ‘I was wrong to … presume. And persevere. Obviously, I misinterpreted … That is to say, the idea clearly makes you uncomfortable, which is the last thing I’d have in mind—so, please, be kind to pretend this conversation never happened, will you?’

Crowley’s heart was beating at such a laboured, strangled way that it actually hurt the inside of his chest. A low, coiling ache, right at the centre—and it spread and took over the nerve endings, taking place of the numbness and nausea. It was too much, it was _too much_ , and he wanted to flee, he wanted to flee more than anything.

_(Or perhaps he didn’t.)_

‘No,’ he said, forcing his lips to move, and ignoring the dizzying ache. ‘No. That’s not what I meant. It’s just.’

He inhaled sharply. Aziraphale’s eyes were pale and inscrutable again, but for the first time Crowley acquired something in the way of proof that they made no fair mirror to what was going on inside.

‘It’s just, I don’t want to talk about it if … if … ngh, don’t make me _say_ it, please,’ Crowley said. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? That thing about the world ending, you want to save all you have and all that, but you’re also sort of afraid of doing something—of, ah, losing something _more_ , if it really comes to losing. So you lessen the … the extent of loss. Don’t take chances. I don’t know.’

‘The world isn’t ending,’ Aziraphale said, guardedly, studying him. Crowley looked up into the sky.

‘No,’ he said, ‘but it might as well be. Like I said, earlier. If you found your life written out in a prophecy, a clear-cut solution. A path that’s not even all that _ineffable_ at all. Then would you stray? At what cost?’

Something twittered in the wind, a bird he’d never heard here before. He tried to remember the name, but couldn’t focus. His hands were cold.

‘I think,’ he heard Aziraphale saying, quietly, ‘that I’d much rather have more to save, and save it as blasted well as I can. But … to each their own, I suppose. We’ll be continuing this conversation, I should hope—no, you know what? Not hope. We’ll be continuing this conversation, period. If you’d _like to_. And you’ll find,’ and suddenly, the angel’s eyes were on Crowley, clear blue and terrifying and seeing, ‘that I don’t like to be _teased_.’

There was a rustle of fabric and a faint motion of air. Crowley stood paralysed and Aziraphale was walking away, in the direction of the city.

‘Do be kind,’ he said on his way, in a voice so level and normal that it was nearly lethal, ‘and check on Adam, will you? I’ll have a look at this _book_. For all I know, it might contain this _clear-cut solution_ you were talking about.’

And suddenly something changed: both inside Crowley and in the air composing the world around him as well. A quick strike of realisation, like a flash of supreme coherency before drowning. Aziraphale walking away, drifting away. _Drifting apart._

 _(‘Yes,’ she had said, or maybe could say, or maybe will, ‘they do. But this one hasn’t yet.’_ )

‘And what if,’ Crowley heard himself saying, almost breathlessly, ‘we _didn’t_?’

Aziraphale stopped, but didn’t turn. 

‘What exactly are you saying, my dear?’ he said, voice muffled.

‘I’m saying,’ Crowley said, heart hammering in his chest as though it was trying to burst. ‘That I know what I would’ve chosen. If that was up to me.’

Slowly, very slowly, Aziraphale turned. ‘But isn’t that just the point?’ he said, quite softly. ‘That it can be?’

Crowley swallowed.

 

_(never knew no better there was_

_no such thing)_

 

He woke up soaked in unfamiliar warmth. It was physical, physical and _solid_ , a nose nuzzled into skin, a palpable murmur of a pulse. Mussed feathers and a blanket, and rhythmical, measured heartbeats. Breathing. 

And then there was a slither of cold. Faint, clever, burning past the skin like a trickle of water or a whiplash, helping distinguish the warmth from his memory senses: _this_ was more familiar, but still not quite, because the warmth persisted. 

He opened his eyes: an open window, wind billowing in in a puffed-out sail of a white curtain, light too bright not to feel dizzy. The cold had come with the wind, and the awakening had come with a rattle of the window frame; it had clicked open to let in the pushing gust of slithery air. The room was flooded with it—and particles of dust cluttering the space, lit up and swarming. A wooden floor. A bed.

A company.

Crowley felt Aziraphale inhale and stir, turning away from him with a snuffle—it invited yet more cold, and it left him tingling, this awareness of almost inebriating spatial proximity. He half-wanted to lean forward and draw back, nearer to the cotton T-shirt and sleep-heated skin, but he couldn’t. He _––_

 _He blinked_. Once. Twice. He was both surprised that he actually remembered how to do it and entirely too unfocused to consider it.

Aziraphale.

Aziraphale was asleep—which in itself was a fascinating phenomenon—but there was more to it, _much_ more: because it was a window that Crowley recognised, and a bed, and a floor, and he remembered the tickle of the angel’s ruffled feathers on his forearm. But then it hadn’t _happened_ yet, not that way. There was no such warmth, no such light, only coldness vastly different than this clever wind.  Not since ...

_Does it mean it’s a …?_

Crowley inhaled sharply, desperately trying to _focus_ , assess the solidity of the tangle of sheets and soft fabric that didn’t feel like a suit draped over his chest and hips; _cottony, homelike_. He fumbled and hisses, almost involuntarily, anxiety rising in him in a cacophony, because Aziraphale’s eyes fluttered open in reaction to the stirring and they were—they were—

 _Blue_. They should be blue. But they _had been_ , before.

‘Crowley. S’early. S’not like you,’ Aziraphale muttered, voice muffled and drowsy and warm, and the words sent Crowley’s head spinning. ‘S’the matter, dear?’ 

And he reached over, a sleepy, looping motion: warm fingers stroking past Crowley’s perpetually cold ones, settling on the wrist. Crowley’s heart was beating too fast but it wasn’t really painful, just impossibly, acutely _nervous_.

And so he leaned forward and into the touch, and settled into it: a moment, then another, and _nothing came to an end_ and nothing promised to do so. And Aziraphale’s brows knitted together, a shadow crossing his face. The curtain flapped in the air, brimming with soft sunlight and September air. And it was just like it was supposed to be. 

‘You never wake this early,’ Aziraphale then said, sounding familiarly, _impossibly_ concerned. 

‘I have, though, you know,’ Crowley whispered, eyes falling closed. He exhaled through his nose: a laboured breath of deep relief, scattering weight and pressure; and shivered as it warmed the angel’s outreached hand. ‘Just once.’ 

**Author's Note:**

> Any thoughts? :)


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